Whenever I go anywhere, it’s inevitable that I leave a small piece of myself behind, and I don’t mean that in a maudlin way. Usually it’s a toothbrush or a bra, but an hour after I left Kaia’s place, she called me with the bad news that my computer’s power supply was still plugged into her wall.

And, while driving in traffic over the George Washington Bridge, I was all like, no worries, here’s my FedEx account, just send it priority overnight, 10:30 delivery, signature required.

At 11:30 this morning, I was still waiting. Since my laptop was dead, I had to re-connect our old G3 in the back room to get the tracking number out of my gmail, and once my dust-induced allergy attack had subsided, I set about finding my package. Long story short: FedEx not only neglected to notice the “signature required” part of the airbill, but also COMPLETELY misread my address. The phone call went something like this:

“Yes, ma’am, your package was delivered to your address at 59 monmouth st”

“FIFTY nine? FUCK! FUCKING FUCK! MOTHER OF SHIT! FIFTY nine? Oh, fuck. SHIT! I mean, fuck, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to – but – FUCK!”

Last year I bought a peacoat. It was delivered to the wrong address, and I never saw it again. After apologizing again to the harried FedEx rep, I headed to 59 Monmouth, where, finding nobody at home, I left a note in the mailbox and kissed my power supply goodbye. We leave for LA tomorrow afternoon. I need my computer on that trip. So, off to the Apple store I went, in search of a power supply, and wishing I hadn’t wasted my last Ativan on a family trip to IKEA.

Call me naive, but judging from the commercials, one might think that the Apple store would be… Oh, I don’t know, smooth, streamlined, EASY TO USE? But oh no. No no no. I walked into a beeping, blitzing mayhem of hipsters, all crowding around iPhones and ogling the Air, with about 50 blue-shirted salespeople doing nothing at all of substance. It took half an hour of wading through impressively mounted (though sparsely described) cinema displays to find the right power supply for my lovechild laptop, after which I spent a lovely 20 minutes in line, watching as the four – FOUR – Apple reps behind the checkout registers re-synced their scanning devices.

During that 20 minutes, I had plenty of time to contemplate the irony of the situation. Due to the ineptitude of an employee a world-class shipping conglomerate, I was waiting (for twenty minutes, have I mentioned?) for one of these fifty-odd eggheads to extricate themselves from their machines so that I could pay an exorbitant amount of money to replace a simple device THAT I HAD ALREADY BOUGHT AND PAID FOR, BUT ANOTHER COMPANY HAD LOST.

Twenty minutes in line can really break a man’s soul. Or a woman’s. Whatever. You know.